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submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.

In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.

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[-] AquaTofana@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been terrified of pregnancy my entire life and I'm a selfish adult who wants to do what I want.

So yes, nothing the governments do can ever make me want to have kids.

Not even you, Greg Abbott, you dickhole pathetic excuse for a "person". I fucking hate you!

Edit: One of my sentences was exceptionally dark.

[-] whatwhatwutyut@midwest.social 20 points 1 year ago

I don't think it's selfish to not want kids. With how fucked the world is, maybe we should be thinking about if it's instead selfish to have kids.

I determined from about age 12 that I didn't want kids. 10 years later and I still don't want them, so I removed the possibility of accidentally having them. The government can't make me have kids - seeing as I yeeted my uterus.

[-] ExLisper@linux.community 13 points 1 year ago

Stop saying that. Not having kids is not selfish. Having kids is selfish. You create a human just because you want to own one.

[-] dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Or you know.... You like children, want to continue the species, and have the biological drive to procreate.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 9 points 1 year ago

You think having kids because you like them isn't a selfish reason? Or that having them to continue the species isn't a supremely arrogant reason?

I can't speak to the biological drive, because I have no idea what it feels like.

[-] ExLisper@linux.community 5 points 1 year ago

You might have a drive to procreate but not using contraception is a choice for most people.

[-] Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

So you're a mouse.

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago

God forbid you do something crazy like intend for humanity to have a future. Fucking wild man, who does that?

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago

Man anti-natalists are a special breed of crazy.

[-] radioactiveradio@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

If that's selfish, we should all be selfish. Fuck it we don't owe the world shit. What's it ever done for us?

this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
490 points (96.9% liked)

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